Frequently Asked Questions

The CiteLink Value (CLV) is a transparent quality score from 0 to 100, computed as the sum of five independently assessed criterion groups. This table showed a superseded six-dimension rubric until 22 Aug 2026 — it was the last copy left in the repo, on the page written for applicants, and its "Visibility 10" row re-scored the index-coverage criterion that KARARLAR Karar 14 removed:

The full per-group breakdown will be published on every evaluated journal profile — no black-box scoring. No journal has been evaluated yet. Methodology details, including sub-criteria and weights, are on the Evaluation Criteria page.

Each journal is to be scored by two independent evaluators matched to its subject area, who must declare conflicts of interest and may not assess journals from publishers they are affiliated with. The pool of subject specialists — editors, research librarians and scholarly-communication professionals — is being recruited and does not exist yet, which is the plainest way of saying that no journal has been evaluated. This answer described the pool in the present tense until 30 Aug 2026.

When the two assessments diverge by more than a defined threshold on any dimension, a senior evaluator not involved in either assessment is to review the case and reconcile the score, and a random sample of completed evaluations is to be audited each quarter for consistency. Both are part of the process being built; neither has run, because no evaluation has.

No. In its current phase, CiteLink operates entirely at the journal level: we evaluate and index journal metadata, policies and publishing practices — not individual articles. You never upload article PDFs, and we do not host or redistribute article content.

Article-level search is live: 104.7 million articles are searchable now, with field-normalized impact on the 101.0 million that carry one on every result. Widening it to the full corpus is on our public roadmap; see the development plan for timelines.

Within each of the 246 published ranking pools (239 subfield names, seven of which appear twice under different OpenAlex ids), a journal is ranked by its share of articles among the world's top-10% most cited — counted fractionally and normalized by field, year and document type. The CLV plays no part in it:

• C1 — the top band of the subfield
• C2 — second band
• C3 — third band
• C4 — bottom band

Journals tied on the same share are promoted together to the better band, so the four bands do not hold exactly a quarter each. In the current edition the fills are C1 31.7%, C2 29.3%, C3 29.9%, C4 9.0%.

Quartiles are relative within a subject, so a journal can hold a C1 quartile and no CLV at all — the quartile comes from citation data, the CLV from journal-level evidence, and neither is computed from the other. A journal publishing enough in several subfields receives a quartile in each.

Quartiles are recalculated from a versioned citation snapshot, on its own schedule and not with the CLV round, and published on the Rankings page.

Indexing is not a one-time award. Every indexed journal is re-evaluated annually: we re-verify the mandatory minimums, refresh the five group scores and recalculate the CLV. Score history is available to verified editors in the Publisher Panel.

If a re-evaluation finds that a journal has fallen below the mandatory minimums — for example, a website that no longer resolves, an abandoned publication schedule, or evidence of unethical practice — the journal is first placed "under review" and the publisher is given 6 months to remedy the findings. Journals that do not remedy them are delisted.

Delisting is published transparently: the profile remains visible with a clear "no longer indexed" notice and the delisting date, so that historical listings cannot be misrepresented.

You may lodge an appeal within 30 days of any decision — a rejection, a specific dimension score, or a delisting. Appeals are submitted through the Publisher Panel (or by email to info@citelink.org with your application ID) and must state which specific findings you dispute and on what factual grounds.

Appeals are to be reviewed by an evaluator not involved in the original assessment, with a target resolution time of four weeks. No journal has been evaluated yet, so no appeal has been heard. Possible outcomes: the decision is upheld, the score is corrected, or a full re-evaluation is ordered.

An appeal never worsens your existing score, so there is no risk in raising a genuine factual dispute.

Every indexed journal may display the official badge and the live CLV widget on its website. The embed snippet is available on the Badge & Widgets tab of your journal profile and in the Publisher Panel — a short HTML fragment that links back to your CiteLink profile and always shows the current score, so it never goes stale after a re-evaluation.

Usage rules are simple: the badge must link to your genuine profile, may not be altered, and may not be displayed by journals that are not (or are no longer) indexed. We intend to scan for misuse of the badge on non-indexed sites. No scan has run: no journal is indexed, so no genuine badge exists yet.

Yes. On acceptance — and after every annual re-evaluation — verified editors can download the official indexing certificate (PDF) from the Publisher Panel. The certificate states the journal title, ISSN, CiteLink ID, current CLV, subject quartiles and the validity period, and carries a verification code that anyone can check against the public profile.

Certificates are issued free of charge, like everything else at CiteLink. Institutions verifying a certificate can simply look the journal up on the Master List or confirm the verification code with us (a public verifier is planned).

Verified editors update most fields directly in the Publisher Panel: contact details, website URL, frequency, APC amounts, licensing, archiving arrangements, and subject classifications. Routine changes go live after a lightweight verification, usually within 3 business days.

Substantive changes — a journal title change, ISSN change, publisher transfer or a switch of access model — trigger a targeted re-check of the affected criteria, because they can influence the evaluation. Report these as soon as they happen; unreported major changes discovered during re-evaluation count against group B (publication stability) and group A (editorial standards and ethics).

Indexed journals are to be monitored continuously between annual cycles — automated checks for dead websites, lapsed archiving and schedule slippage, and action on substantiated third-party reports from librarians or researchers. No journal is indexed yet, so none of this is running. What exists is narrower than a check: eight publisher domains known no longer to reach any journal — springerlink.com, metapress.com and six more; some are dead, the rest land on a publisher's corporate page — are recognised across the whole catalogue, so a profile says the homepage no longer reaches the journal instead of linking to it. That is a fixed list, not something that runs.

Confirmed findings follow a graduated process: first a notification with a remediation deadline, then under review status visible on the public profile, and finally delisting if the issues are not resolved. Deliberate misconduct — fabricated board members, misrepresented peer review, undisclosed sale of the title — can lead to immediate delisting without a remediation period.

The goal is corrective, not punitive: most journals placed under review resolve their findings and retain their listing.

Every publisher with at least one indexed journal automatically receives a public publisher profile aggregating its titles, countries, OA share and evaluation history. To manage it, a staff member registers in the Publisher Panel and requests to claim the profile.

Verification requires an email address on the publisher's own domain, or — where that is impossible — a confirmation letter on letterhead. Once verified, the account can manage all of the publisher's journals from one dashboard: submit new applications, respond to evaluator queries, update metadata and download certificates and reports. Multiple staff accounts per publisher are supported, with per-journal permissions.

Not yet. Neither channel below exists today; both are planned, and both will be free when they do. Until then there is no supported interface — but do not read that as “no way in”, because it is not true and we would rather correct it than let a library build the wrong thing. This site is static HTML: it reads its own data from a public PostgREST endpoint using a read-only key shipped in assets/js/data.js, and anyone can call that endpoint the same way. It returns JSON, filters and paginates. What it is not is a product: it is undocumented, unversioned, shaped around this site’s pages rather than yours, and it will change without notice. Use it if it helps, expect nothing from it, and tell us what you need so the documented v1 above is built to fit. Until 30 Aug 2026 this answer said the pages were the only way to read the data. That sent an integrator to scrape HTML while a JSON endpoint answered the same question in one request — the worse outcome for both sides, recommended by us.

• REST API (planned) — JSON endpoints for journals, publishers, subjects, CLV scores and score history, with filtering and pagination. It will need no key and no contract; see the published specification. The earlier version of this answer said anonymous access "is rate-limited" and that "a free API key raises the limits" — both present tense about something that does not exist, and the second contradicted the specification, which requires no key.
• OAI-PMH (planned) — a standard harvesting endpoint serving Dublin Core and a richer citelink metadata format, with incremental (datestamp-based) harvesting and set-based selective harvesting by subject.

All public metadata is released under an open license that permits reuse with attribution. Commercial reuse of the data is permitted; misrepresenting CiteLink scores is not.

Neither interface is live yet; this is how they are designed to be used. Libraries, discovery services and knowledge bases will typically use the OAI-PMH endpoint for scheduled synchronization: an initial full harvest, then incremental harvests using from/until datestamps to pick up new journals, score updates and delistings. Selective sets are available per subject area and per access model.

For lighter integrations — say, enriching a catalogue record with the current CLV and quartile — the planned REST API will be simpler: one call per ISSN returning the full public profile. Quarterly bulk snapshots of the complete dataset are planned alongside them; none has been published, because none of this is built yet. If you run a library system and need help mapping our fields, contact us; we maintain crosswalks for the common ILS and knowledge-base formats.

Every journal profile carries a "report a data issue" link, or you can write to info@citelink.org citing the CiteLink ID or ISSN. Corrections to factual bibliographic data (titles, ISSNs, URLs, publisher names) are verified against authoritative sources — primarily the ISSN Register and the journal's own website — and are normally applied within 5 business days.

Once the API and OAI-PMH feeds exist, corrections will propagate to them automatically and harvesters will pick them up on their next incremental run. Note that CLV scores are not "corrected" through this channel — disputes about scores go through the appeals process described in the Evaluation & CLV section above.

A valid ISSN, registered with the ISSN International Centre and resolvable in the ISSN Portal, is a hard requirement — applications without one do not pass the technical pre-check. Specifically:

• Online journals need a registered e-ISSN; print journals a print ISSN; journals in both media should hold both, correctly distinguished.
• The title registered with the ISSN Centre must match the title used on the journal's website and in the application.
• ISSNs must be displayed on the journal website in a standard, findable location.

If your journal is new and the ISSN application is still pending at your national ISSN centre, wait for the assignment before applying — we cannot reserve a place in the queue for pending ISSNs. Title changes require a new ISSN; report both to us together so the profile stays consistent.